


i could never give you peace

by smc_27



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Harry's POV, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27749332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smc_27/pseuds/smc_27
Summary: “You can’t tell anyone,” she says when he moves his lips to her neck, partly because he’s trying to figure out what it is that she smells like, because he likes it a lot. “You can’t tell Cassandra.”He laughs, pulls away. She chases him a little, her nose bumping his.“I’ll try to leave it out of our next heart to heart.”She sounds like she means it when she says, “You’re an asshole,” but then she puts her tongue back in his mouth, so he doesn’t really care what she thinks of him.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Comments: 5
Kudos: 90





	i could never give you peace

It starts senior year, when he and Kelly are on a break and his dad is dead and his mom doesn’t know how to be a mom and Harry thinks most things don’t matter. 

They make out at a party when he’s drunk and had half a joint socked away in his bedside table. Allie rarely comes to these parties, but when she does he always notices her. She’s hot, and she’s always been hot, and when he flirts with her outside when his head’s spinning a little, she leans against him and presses her mouth against his. 

Making out with her is a trip, and not just because he’s far from sober. They’re sitting on this bench on this back deck, and her hands are warm on his face and when he slips his hand up under her coat and sweater she lets him. 

“You can’t tell anyone,” she says when he moves his lips to her neck, partly because he’s trying to figure out what it is that she smells like, because he likes it a lot. “You can’t tell Cassandra.”

He laughs, pulls away. She chases him a little, her nose bumping his. 

“I’ll try to leave it out of our next heart to heart.”

She sounds like she means it when she says, “You’re an asshole,” but then she puts her tongue back in his mouth, so he doesn’t really care what she thinks of him. 

-

He catches her eye in the hall and that’s all that it takes to make her blush. 

He likes that. 

He grabs her by the wrist on a Thursday and pulls her into the empty bio lab and presses her against the wall next to the light switch. He doesn’t kiss her because he thinks it’d be fucked up to do that before knowing she wants it. 

When her hands slide up his arms and she looks up her lashes at him, he grins and licks his bottom lip.

“You scared me.”

“Sorry.”

He’s not sorry. 

“My heart’s racing,” she tells him, and then he looks down her shirt and reaches up with one hand, draws his fingers down the V neck. She puts her hand on the back of his neck and pulls. He kind of wants to press his hand against her skin to feel her heartbeat, but that feels like pushing his luck. “What did you pull me in here for?”

She asks like she knows. Which is good. Because she’s not stupid. 

“You just looked so hot walking down the hall.” 

She breathes a laugh and lets him kiss her. 

She lets out a hum and makes out with him until the door opens and she shoves him away. He talks them out of detention because the teacher coming in here likes him. Allie doesn’t say anything when she walks away. 

-

She DMs him to ask if he’s going to the game Friday, and he wonders why she’d think he’d go, then remembers they don’t know each other. It’s not crazy of her to assume that because he hangs out with the guys on the team, he’d go to games. But he doesn’t care and they don’t seem to care about his absence either, so. 

She says it’s a shame, says maybe they could’ve hung out. Harry doesn’t think he wants that. He definitely doesn’t want to hang out with her weird friends or her sister or have anyone think something’s going on that isn’t. 

He sends her his number anyway, tells her to let him know when she’s got a better offer for him. She sends him the middle finger emoji, which he’s weirdly into, and then texts him and says it’s her. He saves her number and says hey back, but doesn’t do anything else with it. 

-

She messages him ‘take me for a drive’ with no capitals or punctuation and he doesn’t know if that’s her style or if something’s wrong. And then he remembers this isn’t like with Kelly. He doesn’t have to care if something is bothering her. He just has to show up and hang out with her. It’s pretty freeing, actually.

She tells him to pick her up from the library and she tosses her backpack into his backseat when she gets in. She looks pissed. 

“All good?”

“Will be if you can manage to distract me.”

Harry grins, revs the engine even though he knows it’s obnoxious. 

“I know a place,” he says, and she sighs, leans her head back against the headrest, then nods like she doesn’t really care where they go or that he’s clearly suggesting someplace to make out. 

He takes her to the edge of this vacant lot where he and Kelly used to come to fool around all the time. Allie chews her lip like she’s nervous, or something. He honestly doesn’t think she’s ready for anything other than kissing him, and he’s not even going to try. It’s fine. He doesn't care. He likes kissing her. Likes the way she puts her hands against him. 

But he thinks something’s actually getting to her, so he says, “Do you wanna talk, or anything?”

And that seems to snap her out of it, because she looks at him and laughs. “No, Harry.” He kicks aside his annoyance at her answer, remembering that he really doesn’t give a shit what’s up with her as long as she’s not going to be shitty to him as a result. “Unless this is the spot you bring girls for deep conversations and I’ve got something wrong here.”

She’s funny. 

He leans towards her, pushes his hand into her hair. “You don’t.”

There’s a tiny, pretty little smile on her lips and she grabs the front of his coat. She says, “Kiss me,” and it shouldn’t be as hot as it is, but he can’t help it if he thinks he might overheat, even in the beginning of February when it’s below freezing outside.

-

He sees the look on her face when he’s at one end of the hall and she’s at the other and in the middle, there’s Kelly with Will and Cassandra. 

He can’t tell if Allie is jealous or just sad, and either way he thinks she looks better when whatever this is isn’t written all over her face. 

He says, “Hey, Allie,” in a low voice as he approaches her and knows the others will hear. 

She keeps walking, but she gives him kind of a hot smile that he thinks is sort of a thank you, and says, “Hey, Harry.”

It’s sexy. He likes it. He wants to text her to ask what’s up, but it feels like it’s not his business. 

-

He texts Kelly and they meet up to talk, and he can see it on her face that she misses him. Because he knows her. And he knows what it looks like when she wants him. And so he reaches up and puts his hand on her face, and he kisses her, and she lets him, and then he says, “This is stupid. We shouldn’t have broken up,” and she gets all mad. 

Which he thinks is fucking dumb. 

Like, it’s clear they want each other, that they aren’t over, and yet she’s pushing him away and not telling him a good enough reason why.

When he’s driving away, he’s just angry enough about it to think it’s a good idea to tell her to go fuck herself. Like, Allie’s around, and she doesn’t treat him like he’s a shitty guy - not in the same way. 

And he doesn’t tell Kelly to go fuck herself, but he does text Allie and ask if she wants to go to a movie. 

They make out a little in the theatre, and it’s the first time Harry’s ever kissed two girls in the same day, but he doesn’t care about that, either.

Allie’s looking at him like she’s wondering if this was a date, and he doesn’t know what to do with that. He doesn’t hold her hand in the car as he’s driving her home, but he does kiss her cheek when he drops her off. Shit, maybe he doesn’t know if it was a date, either. 

He doesn’t want to think about it. Her, or Kelly, or any of it. He smokes a joint in his backyard, out by the tree line, after his mom goes to bed. When he’s exhaling, he looks up and sees all the stars, and tries to remember to ask Allie what her deal is about that, her obvious obsession or connection with stars. Then he pulls out his phone and messages her. 

She replies in the morning, tells him it’s a long story. It sort of sounds like she isn’t going to tell him. It sort of feels like he really fucking wants her to. 

-

She brushes past him when he’s leaving his American History class. And by that he means she runs into him, the corner of her textbook digging into his arm, and doesn’t even apologize before she walks away. He glances around, trying to see what it might be that’s got her moving so fast. The halls are crowded but none of the usual people who seem to piss her off are around. Not that she’s told him who pisses her off, but he thinks he’s got it figured out. 

He goes after her, because he wants to check on her. No, that’s not...He doesn’t go after her. He just walks in the same direction as her and sees where she’s going. He realizes the reason he’s doing it is that he wants to make sure she’s okay. Which is weird, because this thing they’ve been doing, they’ve both made it pretty clear it doesn’t have to be complicated by feelings or outside influences, or whatever. 

Like, yeah, they sometimes ask if the other is okay, but they never really talk about anything, and that’s been working so far. 

She’s literally throwing something into her locker when he gets there, and then she pushes her hair behind her ear with some force when he stops and stands there next to her and looks at her. 

“What?” she asks, and like, is she pissed at him? 

“What’s with you?” She looks at him like he’s an asshole for asking that. And seriously… “Did I do something wrong?”

“What?” she asks, confused. “No.”

Okay great. And you’d think that’d be enough for him to drop it and get out of here. But she also reaches up and angrily wipes at her eye, and if she thinks he doesn’t see it just because she’s looking straight into her locker, she’s wrong. 

He touches her elbow, and she slides him a look like she doesn’t know what the fuck he’s up to. 

He says, “Come here,” and she just blinks up at him, and he turns away because he doesn’t want to do this here. Kelly’s literally gonna be walking down this hallway any minute because she’s got a class here next period. 

He and Allie end up in the stairway at the end of the hall, which is almost always empty because the other staircase is closer to all the classrooms. 

She’s in front of him with her arms crossed and she doesn’t seem to want to look him in the eye.

“Allie,” he says quietly, and she looks up, then, probably because his voice is soft and a little pleading. 

“If I talk about it right now, I’ll literally start crying.” 

Shit. 

“Okay.”

She sniffs, shuffles her feet, and then takes a deep breath like she’s trying to compose herself. “I just have a lot of shit going on, you know?”

He doesn’t know, really. But he knows what it feels like to be overwhelmed and not know what the fuck to do, so he nods his head. 

He tilts his head a little, gives her a little smile. “Well, you wanna hang out later?” he asks, and she’s definitely trying not to look happy he’s asked. “Take your mind off it?”

She lets out a laugh, tilts her chin up a little like she doesn’t need his help. It makes him grin. He likes her like this. 

“I have homework.”

Harry rolls his eyes, takes a step away from her. “So?”

He walks away backwards, and he knows they’re gonna get together despite her weak attempt at saying no. It’s stupid that he feels so good about it. It makes no sense.

-

He winks at Allie in the hallway on Valentine’s Day when he sees her look him up and down. He’s just wearing jeans and a white button down, but he knows he looks good. And Allie looks cute as fuck in her loose white sweater and black jeans with the holes in the knees. There’s a little gold star clip pinning her hair back and Harry’s a little overwhelmed by how much he wants to get his hands into her hair, up under that sweater that really isn’t doing anything for her body except covering up all the parts he likes best. 

He catches Kelly at lunch, asks her to come with him to the library and gives her the gold bracelet he got her for this occasion before they broke up. She looks happy about it. She lets him put the bracelet on him. She kisses him on the corner of the mouth and thanks him. 

She still walks away. 

-

He’s moving his hand up Allie’s thigh in his car and this shit is always uncomfortable because of their position. He isn’t going to tell her they should just get in the back seat or he could push his seat back and she could…

“Stop,” she says, circles her fingers around his wrist. She laughs a little and shakes her head. “Not in your car.”

Without thinking, he asks, “Where do you wanna go?”

She lets out this breathy laugh, and he’s honestly distracted by how she looks right now, her lips all pink and her cheeks flushed. She always looks hot, but this is his favourite. 

“Nowhere.” Yeah, she’s looking at him like she’s a little worried what he’s going to say to that. Like he might be mad, or something. It’s kind of insulting. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

Harry feels the irritated look settle onto his face, his brows furrow at her as he pulls away a little more. His hand moves down to her knee, though he isn’t really sure why he doesn’t stop touching her all together. He should. This is stupid. 

“You think that’s what I was just trying to do?” 

It’s not that it _isn’t_. But he’s definitely not interested in sleeping with Allie or anyone else for the first time in his fucking car parked in the middle of a rest stop on the highway where literally anyone could come up and find them. Making out is one thing. He’s not like, gross.

“No,” she says, but then she sighs and looks a little ashamed or nervous or something. Which he also hates. “I don’t know? What were you just trying to do?” He tilts his head and gives her a look, hoping it explains all the shit in his head without him having to say it. He’s just touching her. He wasn’t trying to do anything more than just kiss her with his hand over her clothes. “I’ve never had sex with anyone.”

Fuck. He doesn’t know what to say to that. He isn’t surprised, and he’d sort of assumed, but her saying it flat out still catches him off guard. Because like...There’s something he likes about the fact that she’s not shy about it, to tell him and not give a fuck. But this might also be one of the first things she’s actually told him about herself. They don’t really talk a lot about anything real when they hang out. 

“Okay,” he says gently, because he doesn’t want her to think he has an opinion about the status of her virginity. Because he doesn’t. They aren’t anything. They’re just making out and wasting time together. “I don’t expect you to like…”

“No, I know,” she says, and then closes her eyes tight and shakes her head. When she opens them, she throws on a smile, but Harry’s not buying this sudden shift. “Sorry. I’m all in my head. I just.” She takes a deep breath, lets it out, and then looks right at him. “How come we never go to your house?”

Yeah, too close. Too close to this being something bigger than it is. 

“How come we never go to your house?” he throws back. She pins him with a look that plainly tells him he should know the answer. That he does know the answer. And for some reason he says the next thing without being able to stop himself. “I don’t like being home.”

She pauses, though her fingers move gently against his wrist where she’s still touching him. “Why?”

He shrugs. He isn’t going to tell her it’s because he’s always alone there, and the house is big and quiet and full of a bunch of bullshit that reminds him of his dad. That the only time his mom talks to him is to pick fights with him and make him feel like shit. To remind him that he’s just like his dad, and she never says that with any kind of fondness. That being home means he has to deal with his sister, who’s acting like nothing’s changed in the last few months. Like she’s just been able to get over their dad’s death with the snap of her fingers. 

Harry reaches up, puts on a smirk and brushes Allie’s hair back gently with the tips of his fingers. 

“I like hanging out with you more.” 

She leans into his touch a little, but whispers, “Harry,” like she really wants an answer. It’s sort of fucked that she wants him to tell her deep shit about himself but doesn’t say anything about herself. 

But there he is acting like her telling him she’s never been with anyone isn’t a big deal, when he knows it is. 

“It’s hard,” he says, quietly, eyes on hers. He’s really fucking hoping she hears what he isn’t saying. And she must, because she leans forward and kisses him really gently. 

“You can’t run from it forever.”

He doesn’t mean to laugh, but he also thinks she’s a hypocrite. “Neither can you.”

They’re just staring at her. He doesn’t know what she’s running from, but he knows it’s something. And he hasn’t described all the shit he’s got going on, but she knows it’s more than he’s letting on. And he thinks making out with her is one of the only things that quiets all the shit in his head. 

She leans closer, gives him a mischievous little look he thinks is fucking hot, and says, “Wanna try?”

Harry smiles at her, nods, and says, “Yeah.”

-

A few days later, when his mom and sister are off visiting his grandparents and she didn’t want to argue with him until he agreed to go, so she just didn’t bother, he invites Allie over. They go straight to his room and he makes the mistake of asking what she tells her family she’s doing when she’s with them. She says, “Don’t worry about it,” on this little laugh, like it’s really none of his business, or something. She also lies back on his bed and he reminds himself of her words in his car and he knows this isn’t some kind of fucking invitation, or whatever.

But then after a bit she sits up and takes her shirt off, and Harry just blinks at the surprise of it and the sight of her in her black bra.

She laughs, pushes at his chest and leans down, and says, “I hope it’s a good thing that you’re completely silent right now?”

“Mm,” he says, runs his hands up her sides and onto the fabric. “Speechless.”

She laughs, “Shut up,” into his mouth, and he smiles because he’s having fun.

-

He asks her if she’s sure like, six times before she’s physically pushing his hand up under her dress, the black one with the stars printed on it. She looks really fucking pretty and he’s told her that twice already. 

He feels like an asshole, or something, for getting this far with her after what she said a couple weeks ago about physical stuff, or whatever. But she’s wet when he touches her, and her breathing gets all rushed, and she looks so fucking good on his bed when he gets her undressed. 

He should’ve stopped this with her before it got this far. It doesn’t mean anything serious and he thinks she’s got to be thinking it does, if she’s willing to let him touch her like that, and then to return the favour. This isn’t just two teenagers fucking around anymore. 

But then she just uses his washroom and gets dressed, kisses him fast before she leaves him alone in his room, and maybe he's the one making it a bigger deal than it has to be.

-

She doesn’t answer his text when he asks her what she’s up to. Usually, even when she’s busy, she’ll message him back to say so. He’s not _mad_ , or anything, but he’s something. He’s something. Because he likes that he can usually count on her. That usually when he’s feeling like shit, she’s an available distraction. Even if they’re just texting back and forth and sending stupid memes and shit, it makes him laugh and feel better. 

Now, instead of having Allie to talk to, he has nothing but the quiet of his bedroom and his house. He drinks some of the vodka he’s got in his closet, and accidentally texts Kelly. Well, it’s not an accident. He knows what he’s doing, and he’s doing it on purpose. He just...He doesn’t want to be by himself with all this shit in his head. 

Kelly messages him back. She asks what he’s doing. How he’s been. He doesn’t have a good answer for that and doesn’t want to dump all his issues on her - on her or Allie, honestly - so he says he’s fine and asks what she’s up to. She sends him back a photo of herself with one of those sheet masks on and a movie on her laptop. He tells her she looks fucking cute. She sends back a blushing emoji, and everything feels a little like it used to, which makes him feel a warmth that’s been missing in his chest almost the entire time they’ve been broken up. Almost the entire time. Except when he’s been with Allie. 

After they’re done talking, he has more vodka and then falls asleep and does a really shitty job of not feeling like an asshole about everything.

-

He’s waiting for Kelly because she asked him to meet her by the entrance so they could go off campus for lunch together. They haven’t done that since they were still dating, and he wants her back enough that his brain has convinced himself this is a good sign. She wears the bracelet he gave her every day, and she’s asking him to go to lunch, and there’s no reason he can think that this doesn’t mean they might be getting back together soon. 

Allie sees him, smiles, and he knows he doesn’t smile back the way he should, considering. Like, just this past weekend they were making out in his room and now he’s got to remind himself not to act cold. It’s just that if he’s talking to her when Kelly shows up, it’ll look really fucking bad. 

“Hey,” Allie says, and then, “Congratulations.” He doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “The play.”

Oh. Right. It’s weird that anyone would be surprised or find it notable that he’s the lead. Who else were they gonna cast? Will? 

“Thanks,” he says, and forces a smile. She can definitely tell. “You’re working on it too, right?” She nods, then looks over her shoulder like she wants an out from this conversation. Which is absolutely only because she started it and it’s not going how she wanted it to. He kind of feels like an asshole for it. “So we’ll see each other a bunch, then.”

“Guess so,” she says. Harry can see Kelly at the other end of the hall, over Allie’s shoulder. 

If he were a better person, he’d tell her they should talk later. He’d explain all this to her. He’d tell her he loves Kelly and has this whole time, even though they haven’t been together. Even though he’s been fucking around with Alie. He should be honest with her, for once. 

But all he does is watch her give him a small smile like she knows something’s up, but isn’t going to ask him about it because that’s not really their thing. And when she says, “I’ll see you later,” he nods and grins back at her and knows he’s a dick for being thankful that she’s leaving before Kelly approaches. 

-

He and Kelly spend three days talking about them, and working on it, and making a bunch of promises to be better together and stuff. Harry spends that same amount of time being secretly bothered that Allie’s not reaching out to him. It’s fucking selfish of him and he knows it, but they haven’t gone this long without talking to each other since they started messing around in secret. 

He knows he should tell Allie he and Kelly are back together before she sees them at school, but he doesn’t. 

When he and Kelly are walking down the hall at school holding hands on Monday, Allie sees it, meets his eyes, and god, maybe she should’ve been cast in the play, too, because she has absolutely no expression on her face at all before she turns back to her locker and doesn’t let on she has a single feeling about this at all. 

He catches her between periods, reaches for her elbow and pulls her into an empty classroom. It’s so unlike the first time he did it that he thinks it was a mistake. She’s got her shoulders back like she’s decided that no matter what he says, she’s not going to let on it’s affecting her at all. He doesn’t know how she fucking does that. It’s nearly masterful. 

“Are you okay?”

She blinks, twists her lips and he watches her jaw twitch a bit. “I’m good.”

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the question he should’ve asked. 

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, meaning it. “I was gonna text you, but…”

“It’s fine, Harry,” she says. She sounds like she believes it. Maybe he just doesn’t want to believe she could be this over it this fast. “Don’t worry about me.”

His brow furrows, and he leans back against the desk behind him, crosses his arms. Allie slips her hands into her pockets and looks at him, waiting for what he’s going to say. 

“Kelly and I just…” He reaches up, puts his hand on the back of his neck. He realizes too late that he cares about Allie. A lot, actually. He likes her, and he doesn’t want her to be upset, and he definitely cares about what she thinks of him. He doesn’t want her to hate him like everyone else does. 

“You don’t have to explain,” she says, laughing quietly, but it’s almost bitter. “I get it. Fun while it lasted, and whatever.”

He thinks that’s sort of reducing it to something way different than it was. 

“Look, I…” He stops, sighs his frustration, and meets her eyes. Yeah, she’s definitely waiting for him to say something that means something - anything - to her. Maybe some confirmation that she wasn't just some girl he used to pass the time. And she wasn’t. “I can’t just go back to pretending you mean nothing to me.”

She smiles the slightest bit, looks over her shoulder to make sure no one’s walking through the door, or watching, or something, and leans in. She kisses his cheek, and Harry puts his hand on her hip without thinking. If this got back to Kelly - if any of this got back to Kelly…

Allie leaves without saying anything in response to what he confessed. That feels like shit, too, and he thinks maybe he deserves it. 

Allie’s an enigma, and he spends way too much time thinking about how he only realized that after getting to know her just even this much. Before, he thinks he could’ve acted like he had her figured out. The more he learns about her, the more convinced he is that maybe he doesn’t know her at all. 

The more he thinks he wants to. He doesn’t know what to do with that.

-

“That’s not really the point, is it, Harry?”

He can’t help the way he looks at her, smiles. It reminds him of when they were hanging out. It reminds him how much he likes her. It’s not the first time she’s spoken directly to him since, or anything, but he always fucking likes it. 

-

When she says, “You’re leaving?” it’s genuinely the only thing that makes him want to stay. Because there’s a part of him - has been for months - that really wants to prove her wrong. To defy her expectations and be the kind of guy she wants him to be. Not that he knows what that is. But he thinks…

God, is he fucking crazy to thinks he must believe he could be? Like, he genuinely does think she wouldn't have been anything at all to him - wouldn’t have let him kiss her and touch her and hang out with her - if she didn’t think he was worth the time. 

There’s a part of his brain that’s screaming at him to ask her if she wants to come with him. There’s a part of him that really wants to protect her, not that he’d be any fucking good at that anyway. 

The only thing he really _knows_ here, is that everything feels awful except the fact that Kelly keeps choosing him and the way Allie’d smiled at him this morning when she’d turned up with Sam and looked amused at the state of him. 

Harry looks at her in the rearview. The sun catches her necklace just right and shines in his eye, making him look away. Honestly, it seems appropriate. 

-

“You showed up.”

The hot little look on her face just makes him feel even better, honestly, because it’s going to keep surprising him, for sure, that she wants to flirt with him or talk to him or be around him at all at this point. Not that they owed each other anything just because of what they were before, or something like that. But…

When he asks, “Why’d you change your mind?” he might as well have just told her he really needed a win today. 

She’s so hot walking towards his car that he doesn’t even think for a second before following. Sitting next to her, her reaching for her seatbelt and smiling as he turns the key...God, it just reminds him of this winter, when they’d pass time together and go somewhere to make out. He absolutely knows that she can tell he’s thinking about it when she looks at him across the console with her phone screen illuminating her face. 

He can absolutely tell she’s thinking about it, too. 

Harry thinks he’s starting to realize that maybe he does know her, a little, even despite neither of them really trying for that to be true. And he thinks he likes it. Knowing her. Being one of the few people, maybe, who do. 

Kissing her by the pool feels like a first kiss, and he really can’t explain that at all, so he’s not going to bother trying.


End file.
